BILLERICA, Mass., July 10, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- TEL NEXX, Inc., (TEL NEXX), a wholly owned subsidiary of Tokyo Electron U.S. Holdings and a leading supplier of advanced wafer packaging solutions, announces that a world leader in innovative High Performance LED technology has purchased an Apollo physical vapor deposition (PVD) system for an Asian manufacturing facility. The Apollo tool will help reduce the manufacturing costs of the supplier's unique LED structures and control overall film thickness with greater precision than what most evaporators can deliver. The TEL NEXX tool makes possible the de­position of very thin layers with excellent uniformity, within each wafer as well as wafer to wafer. By minimizing layer thicknesses and the stress within each layer, the Apollo can reduce both wafer and die warpage.

Kurt Williams, TEL NEXX's GM of PVD technology, observed, "This Asian manufacturer bought our tool for superior competitive performance and multi-functional flexibility. TEL NEXX's value proposition, along with our reputation for world-wide customer support, sealed the deal." Kurt added, "Many LED manufacturers are achieving cost reductions by adopting larger wafer sizes. Not only is TEL NEXX's Apollo one of the few tools on the market able to handle the entire range of today's wafer sizes (50mm – 300mm), but Apollo also allows quick-change wafer-size conversion on the production floor, in some cases in under an hour." The Apollo distinguishes itself from most other sputtering systems handling a range of "problem" wafers: thinned, warped or odd-shaped, or wafers needing special cooling or post-process annealing requirements.